la tortura

Last night I went to Verizon Center with my girl Emily to see Wyclef Jean and Shakira. What a great fucking concert!

First though, let's paint a little picture of the setting. I haven't seen a concert at Verizon in a while, but this time the stage was set-up on the 7th St. side of the arena. We walked to section 120 to find our seats. For some reason there was a big line at our entrance, yet no where else. Once we got in, I realized the line was because our entrance was for our neighboring sections, as well as the floor seats. Annoying, but no big deal. Especially not since we were right on the first level, stage left. We were so close to the stage and could see everything perfectly.

Walking into the concert, I joked to Emily that if the INS did a surprise raid on the place, the entire stadium would clear out and we'd have our pick of seats. All jokes aside, the crowd was 95% Hispanic. Apparently we didn't get the memo about bringing our national flags with us to the show. I saw just about every Central and South American flag at some point during the show. I should have expected as much from an artist who only recently released her second English language CD. I thought though that more teen-aged girls would be there, what with the popularity of "Hips Don't Lie".

Wyclef opened the show. This was my second time seeing him live, so I half knew what to expect. If you ever have the chance to see him in concert, do yourself a favor and go. He is amazingly talented. Much more so than you might assume. He was on stage for about 45 minutes, and even did two old Fugees songs.

Then after a brief change of stage equipment, Shakira took to the stage. Her set favored her Spanish CDs heavily. I knew most of the songs, since she was immensely popular in Spain while I was studying over there in '99. The crowd went absolutely bonkers when she came out. Remember how the crowds were during the World Cup games this summer? Yeah, it was the same atmosphere and energy in the air.

Here is a testament to what a great performer Shakira is. My friend Emily doesn't speak any Spanish, but she was absolutely riveted the entire time she was on stage. She has great stage presence and engages the audience throughout the entire concert. Plus, her dance moves are so exotic and hypnotic, you can't help but stare. I swore off the roast beef curtains ages ago, but I'll be damned if she didn't have me reconsidering that for a minute or two!

I'm definitely glad that Emily convinced me to go to the concert with her. After watching Shakira move like that on stage, I have even more motivation to head to the gym and get my ass in shape!

Come back to me

I almost had a serious mental and emotional breakdown this week. Monday afternoon my friend Kevin stopped by my desk to see how iTunes works. I hooked up my iPod and waited for the system to connect. All of the sudden, a message popped up that there was a problem and the iPod was reverted back to the factory defaults. Umm, excuse me? I disconnected and sure enough, to my horror, EVERYTHING on my iPod was GONE. Over 5,900 songs and videos, more than 30 gigs of multimedia, simply GONE. Poof. No more.

I could feel the tears of rage and frustration welling in my eyes. It took every ounce of self-control to not erupt right then and there. After that, my iPod just completely stopped working. I couldn’t even get it to turn on. I frantically started calling my friends to find out what I could do. In the end, I logged onto the Apple website and signed up to have it serviced. I’ll mail it back to Apple tomorrow and hopefully have it back in a few weeks. Please come back fully functional little iPod!

When all this happened, all I could think was “Thank God I still have my shuffle, so I’m not completely without music.” That is, until my shuffle died on Tuesday. I worked out at lunch and the battery died at the end of my work-out. I brought the shuffle upstairs to my desk to charge it on my computer. After I plugged it in, it never worked again. Apparently my work computer has the iPod kiss of death. I’ll never plug another iPod into it again! This has been an expensive lesson learned.

Tuesday night I went out and bought a new shuffle, because there is no way I could make it a couple weeks without a shuffle or iPod. Yes, I am that dependent on music. I listen to music my entire commute to and from work, all day long at my desk and a lot of the evenings at home.

Other than this disaster, life has been good. I am almost completely settled into my new place and I love it. I’ve decided living alone is the best thing for me. It is so great to come home from a shitty day at work and just decompress.

I’ve already hosted my first small gathering of people and it was a moderate success. Even though I don’t have a very large space, I think it was big enough for the twelve of us to all be in there and not feel crowded. I’m looking forward to having an official house-warming once I’ve had a chance to hang the paintings and other small things that I haven’t finished yet.

As I was writing this, we had a fire-drill here at work. What a genius way to waste an hour of my day. After we all walk down a block to our official meeting spot, it then time to turn around and head back to the building. Of course my friends and I stand outside for another 20 minutes. When we got back inside, they had Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream set up for us. Sweet. I have now done absolutely NOTHING since I left for lunch at noon.

Hallelujah!!!

OK kids, run to the bathroom, grab a cup of your preferred beverage and settle in for a minute. This post is going to cover quite a bit, just because I am too lazy to break it up into the individual posts that it all deserves.

The last time I posted, I was still staying out in Rockville with Jamie. I had such a fucking blast spending the week with him. All but one night with him was spent in some state of inebriation. The highlight of the weekend though was Saturday night. We came down to Dupont and split up to see various other friends. We joined back up at the Lantern for the Underwear Ball. Some of those people really take that seriously. Who knew?

Anyway, from the Lantern we popped over to Omega for a drink. One drink was all it took to realize that we should not have gone there in the first place. Everyone decided at that point to just call it a night. Jamie and I headed off down the street to find his car. Some where around N St and 20th, we heard the distinct sounds of a party winding down.

What did we do? We walked up to the house and tried the front door. It opened. We proceeded up the stairs to the second floor and tried the door to the apartment from where the music was coming. Again, it opened.

Lo and behold, Jamie and I had stumbled into the remains of some sort of straight costume party. Or so I assume based on what people were wearing. We just walked in and started mingling like we belonged there. At some point, someone asked the inevitable question of who we were and who we knew. Immediately, this cute girl next to me piped up and said that we were with her. I leaned over to thank her and say that we really didn’t know anyone. She then let me know that she really didn’t know anyone there either. Awesome.

By this point, Jamie is in the kitchen making us drinks like he was the host. This is when things get a bit hazy. I know there were multiple rounds of shots poured by Jamie. I also know that he grabbed a married woman’s breasts, then hit on her husband. In front of her. It was priceless. After doing an impromptu performance of "Kiss" by Prince, we started for the door to leave. Apparently the actual hosts of the party weren’t having this. They wanted to get our numbers to invite us to their next party! Who on earth crashes a random party and then gets invited back for the next one? Only us. Classic.

The next day was pretty much one of the shittiest I’ve had in a while. Yes, I had a hang-over but nothing terrible. The shitty part was when my lil sis called to tell me that my mom was in the hospital. And had been since Saturday morning. Excuse me? It is now about 3 pm Sunday afternoon. Awesome. Thanks for letting us know about Mom, Dad. Fuck you too. I know that he didn’t say anything to us at the time because it didn’t seem very serious. But, god dammit, I want to know when my mom is in the hospital. I think that I deserve to know that as her fucking son! Ugh. Long story short, my mom thought it was some kind of intestinal thing, but now they think it might be a slipped disk or something similar. She is feeling better now though.

The next week and weekend were extremely boring. I was getting a lot of shit together to apply for an apartment, and then doing a lot of commuting and sleeping. There is nothing like nearly four hours of each day spent just getting to and from work. But, the happy news? Oh yeah, I moved into my new place this past weekend. I’ve now spent three nights sleeping in my own bed again and it feels fan-fucking-tastic. I’m living alone again, for the first time in two years. Part of me misses having a roommate, but I am so much happier on my own.

My new place is extremely central to just about everything. I’m about five minutes walking from any place in Dupont or Logan. I can still walk to work too. It is so nice to know that I can go out on 17th for a night of drinking and only have to stumble a very few blocks to get back to my bed. No more cab rides and hiding a $10 each night to make sure I could pay for said cab ride.

There are a few minor things I’d like to change about my new place. Like the height of the pipe for the shower head. I am a little taller than normal, but not freakishly tall or anything. That said, my shower head comes up to about my neck. This is very convenient for things like washing my hair. Right now, I’m forced to drop to my knees to wash my hair. No comments bitches! That definitely needs to be fixed. I am also not thrilled with the teeny tiny kitchen I have. On the positive side though, it will only serve to help me in my goal to lose weight. With no space to store food, I guess I won’t be eating nearly as much!

Now, the positives. I have three closets. Yes, THREE closets. This is unbelievable! I’ve never had this much room for all of my clothes and other assorted crap. I think that I’ll be more organized in this apartment then I have been since college. Also, I already know three people in my building. And surprisingly enough, I don’t know any of them in the biblical sense! In some ways, it feels like I am living in the Rock Hudson Hall (from a different era, solidly built and unassuming) of Homo University.

Finally, I need to give special thanks to everyone who helped me move, both back in May and again this past weekend. Chuck, Chris, Taylor, and my family, you are all wonderful people with the patience of saints. Moving sucks ass, I know this. And with me, it is almost always a bigger fiasco than need be. What can I say? I don’t deal well with change.

I’m going to try and post more regularly, now that my life is a little more stable. Don’t be surprised if you see me stumbling down the street on any given night. I’m back bitches!